


Only Takes a Week to Break a Habit

by Kicker



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, F/M, Prompt Fill, Sexual Content, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 02:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7995856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kicker/pseuds/Kicker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you fall into a routine and don't realize how much you rely on it until it's interrupted.</p><p>Sometimes you're the kind of person - Elder - who knows that things can go to shit in less than a heartbeat, and that you should know better than to ever get comfortable.</p><p>Sometimes you still make the mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Takes a Week to Break a Habit

**Author's Note:**

> this spawned from the [haircut sorta-prompt](http://tessa1978.tumblr.com/post/150130796892/maxsons-hair) from the lovely [tess1978](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tess1978).
> 
> she said 'anyone's free to do what they like with it'
> 
> so I made some sads.
> 
> enjoy. ;)

The chair rocks slightly on the floor, one leg stuck on the join between two metal plates. Arthur rests his hands on his knees, wishing he had something to do with them. Something to drink, a book to read, even a report to review would be better than nothing.

No. Not a report. Not yet.

The scribe's feet tap on the floor behind him. The silence between them is so profound that even her light footsteps are deafening. He can hear every single noise in the room, in fact. The delicate snip of the scissors, of metal gliding against metal. The faucet still dripping over in the corner, a rhythmic and irritating sound. He can hear the woman's breath, soft and even, and perhaps it's his imagination but he can almost hear the trimmings pattering down onto the oilcloth wrapped around his neck.

"There we go," says the scribe, so quietly it seems to be addressed more to herself than to him. Then fingers suddenly rake through his hair again, pulling back his head, making the chair half-rock and him half-think that he's about to fall. But the chair holds, and the scribe circles it to view him from the front.

She nods, once. "The beard, sir?" she says, reaching out to his chin. "It's getting a little untidy."

He jerks away his head, irritably. "Leave it," he says.

 _Leave_.

He doesn't say it. But she seems to understand it nonetheless.

She nods, again. "I guess we're done here, then."

It is untidy, he knows it, he sees it in the mirror every goddamned day. But he’s not ready. He's not ready to bare his neck to the blade of this scribe, to close his eyes and trust in her. He's not ready for fingertips on his skin, fingers that are rough and fast and unpredictable, fingers that don’t know to avoid the creased skin around the scar that still tingles and stings when even the air catches it wrong.

It stings now, just like the wish, the foolish wish that this could be different. That it could be other hands running over his hair, soothing away his troubles. That he could still have that half hour, that precious half hour in his week, his month, in which he doesn't have to be the Elder. The wish that when the knock on the door had come, the week after the battle for the airport, that it hadn't been this scribe.

"Where's Knight Pearce?" he'd asked. But he already knew the answer. The look in the woman's eyes said it all, even before she replied, and the chasm had already opened up in his chest to swallow him from the inside.

"I'm sorry, sir," she'd said. "She didn't make it. The battle... the ferals..."

He fought to stop any expression from reaching his face, and perhaps it worked because the scribe still stood in the doorway, a bag of supplies that didn't belong to her clutched tight in one hand, the other on the doorhandle.

"Why wasn’t I informed?" he asked, still fighting, now anger as well as grief. It shouldn't be a surprise, it shouldn't be a _fucking_ surprise.

"I don't know sir," she said, her brow furrowed in concern. "I thought you were. It is in the reports."

The reports. The pile of them, over there by his terminal, unread. Too many of them, too soon after the battle for him to get through them all. In there, in one of those folders, he knows now he'll find one line.

Knight Nell Pearce. Deceased.

 _See you in a week_ , she'd said.

That was a lie.

  
Just over a month ago, the knock on the door had come later than he expected. He looked over his shoulder to see the Knight in the doorway, her smile as bright as ever. Her bag was clutched under one elbow, two bottles of Nuka-Cola caught in the fingers of that hand. She always brought a treat of some kind.

"Afternoon," she said, and kicked the door shut behind her.

He nodded, and finished reading the message from Kells. He'd have to reply to it later; he'd only started reading it because she was late, and now he wouldn't have a chance. Now, also, he'd be thinking about the contents for the whole half hour.

Behind him, a scraping sound said she was dragging a chair into the usual spot, where the fluorescent lights were brightest and there was the most room for her to move around. So he pushed the irritation aside, pulled his undershirt over his head, and tossed it onto his bunk. He sat down in the chair, heavily, and watched as she laid out everything she'd use. Brushes, combs, soap, scissors, razor.

 _Like a torturer's toolkit_ , she often joked. _Specially the way some of you guys act about soap._

He closed his eyes, emptied his mind. Too much, it turned out, because he didn't notice the stiffness in her movements. He didn't notice that her fingers weren't moving as deftly over his scalp as usual. And when her hands moved down to his neck and shoulders it was only hindsight that let him feel they were weak, unbalanced.

He didn't notice anything until she stopped touching him altogether, without saying a word. He waited a moment before turning around, looking over his shoulder, almost irritated by the disruption. Then he caught her bent over, biting her lip, with her hand braced on the table.

She couldn't be sick, not now. Not on the way to the Commonwealth, not just as they were taking the fight to the Institute.

"What’s wrong?" he asked.

"The usual," she said, gesturing to her side. "It's... giving me a little trouble."

He frowned. "Still?"

"Happened a few times recently," she said. "Must be being in the air like this. Or the weather. Or the climate so far north, I don't know. It's okay, it’ll pass."

But the smile with which she accompanied her reassurance was clearly forced.

"Listen to me," she continued. "Twenty-two years old and already sounding like a grizzled old veteran. I only got blown up by mutants once, what the hell am I going to be like in twenty years?"

She straightened up, but there was still a tautness to her expression that said the pain hadn't subsided, and the scissors hung loosely from her fingers as though she'd forgotten they were there.

He got up, a wave of embarrassment rushing over him that he'd made her stand, that he'd not noticed her discomfort, that he'd not even _asked_ about her.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be." He took the scissors from her, placing them back on the table. Then he took her hand, and helped her into the chair.

"I should go," she said.

"Don't," he replied. "Please."

  
He didn't know the extent of the injury she'd sustained in the mutant attack, only that there was a patch of darkened, coarse skin that ran up her right arm, under her rolled-up sleeves at least to her shoulder. He'd noticed it the first time he met her two years before. Not immediately. He'd had enough time to make a fool of himself before that.

He came across her in a corridor of the Citadel, brandishing a pair of scissors at a Knight.

"You give me the caps we agreed on," she said, "or I swear to God I'll give you a Megaton special in your sleep."

The Knight laughed, then looked over toward Arthur and blanched. He dug in his pockets and tossed a handful of caps on a table, carelessly enough that some bounced away and down onto the dusty floor, before turning and marching speedily away.

"Yeah, thanks," she said after his retreating back. "Asshole."

Arthur approached, picked up a few of the scattered caps and handed them to her.

"Thanks," she said, counting them. "What do you know, he actually paid in full. Slightly more than full, actually. Weird."

"Glad to hear it," he said.

She dropped the caps into her pocket and stared after him. "I'm still going to write 'kick me' in his undercut next time."

He frowned. "I hope you realize that's a Knight you're talking about."

She suppressed a laugh. "Yeah," she said. "Well, so am I and that shit doesn't protect me when I'm an asshole."

"You're a Knight?" he asked, incredulous.

Her eyes met his with an expression of amusement that was quickly cut off by one of surprise. "Yeah," she said. "Who the fuck are... oh uh. You're you. Okay."

He nodded, half-pleased to be recognized, half-not due to the reaction. "As a Knight," he said, "shouldn't you be using your time to better advantage? Training, perhaps? Drills? Not cutting hair, or whatever it is you're doing."

"Trust me," she said, turning toward him, letting him see the bright red skin on her arm, practically glowing even in the dingy light of the corridor. "Soon as I'm cleared for that by the medics, I'll get right back on it. In the meantime I need something to do with that time, so I may as well make you guys look a bit tidier. What can I say, I'm multitalented."

His stomach lurched. Embarrassment, or so he thought at the time.

She smiled, sweetly. "Speaking of which, you want me to sort out that mess on your head? You were nice so I'll give you a discount."

"No," he said, by now regretting his decision to approach altogether. "Thank you."

_What mess on my head?_

She laughed. "Your loss," she said. "See you around, I guess."

And he did see her around, more than he intended. It seemed that every time he walked out into a common area she was there, another Knight or Paladin or Scribe either talking or in a chair in front of her. Joking and laughing, or relaxing and peaceful, letting her push their heads from one side to the other without a single argument.

Maybe he should go to her, he thought. Atone for his erroneous assumption, see what she had to offer. But by the time he got the courage to approach, she was gone. Back on duty, it seemed, something learned after some subtle questioning. 

So it was even more weeks later that he saw her again, in the mess hall this time, and asked if she would cut his hair.

She stopped halfway to a mouthful, noodles spilling from her fork. "I'm kind of back doing the Knight thing," she said, before resuming her meal.

"Oh," he said. "Sorry to bother you, then."

He made to turn away but she started waving her hand in the air. _No_ , it seemed to say, _wait_ , before she swallowed down the mouthful and coughed enough to speak.

"I owe you," she said. "For before. Come find me tomorrow. Thursday 3pm, that's your slot. Don't forget it."

  
Hard to believe that was a year and a half ago. It had become a routine. Every two weeks, sometimes three depending on duty rosters, he'd go out to find her. Thursday afternoon, fifteen-hundred hours on the dot, he'd be in a chair, her hands now pushing his head from side to side, talking about nothing, joking about everything.

At some point she started tending to his beard, which grew thicker on his cheeks every week, it seemed. Sometimes she pulled out brushes and foam and cutthroat razor to leave his cheeks bare and smooth, or just trimmed it enough for it to remain tidy for a little while.

He didn't much care what she did.

Once the Prydwen was completed, he made sure she was assigned to his crew.There were glowing reviews of her conduct in battle and he'd read enough history books to know that you have to be able to trust the person who's holding a razor to your throat.

That was all it was.

That was all he told himself it was.

She started coming to him, then, in his private quarters, the same day and the same time, every week now. Just the usual routine, displaced. With limited access to water and so on, he'd take off his shirt, and she'd roll up her sleeves. Her hands began straying further from his hair, thumbs pressing circles into the back of his neck, releasing tensions he didn't realize were there until she'd lifted them.

And now the roles were reversed. She was sat in the chair in front of _him_ , her body twisted with tension, tormented by this injury that should have healed long ago. But he knew as well as any that the deepest scars never truly heal. He couldn't fix them. Nobody could. But perhaps he could help her forget them, just for a little while.

That's why he reached out, why he stroked a hand over her hair. It was pulled back tight in a plait, and before he quite knew what he was doing he was pulling the band from it. He ran his fingers through, releasing it, fascinated by the way it held the pattern of waves. He held it in his hands, watching the colors change as he turned it under the flickering light.

He tried to remember how she touched him, the movements she used even before she cut or trimmed anything, the ones that cleared his mind and let him just _be_. But he couldn't, and that made him more ashamed than anything. Nearly two years he'd sat and taken what she had to give without even thinking about what she'd put into it.

Uncertain what to do, run through by guilt, he ran his fingers through her hair again, pressed fingertips into her scalp, more at random than with any pattern. But when he accidentally brushed her ear she let out a low sigh and seemed to relax, so he pulled her hair away from it and did it again. She bent her head over to one side, reaching up into his touch, stretching her neck out long.

He was filled with an almost irrepressible urge to touch his lips to it, to press kisses up that smooth skin from her shoulder right to her ear. Instead he trailed his fingers down it, just to the collar of her shirt, but then he wanted to pull it to one side and off the shoulder altogether so he let go.

He circled the chair to stand in front of her. Her hands were balanced carefully on her knees, the left still, but the right trembling. He knelt before her, resting his right hand on her left.

"Have you spoken to Cade?" he asked.

"He can't do anything," she said. "Or won’t. He thinks I’m imagining it."

"I’ll have a word with him."

"Don't," she said, opening her eyes and meeting his gaze for the first time. "I don't want special... treatment."

Her words faltered, halting. Her brow furrowed, momentarily, then lifted in something that looked like surprise.

 _I need all my soldiers in peak condition_ , he thought, because that's what he was supposed to think.

The words melted before they reached his lips.

 _I need you to be well_ , he thought, and he decided that was a better way to put it but before he could even finish the sentence his thought trailed away because he'd already realized what he really meant.

_I need you._

Nearly two years of touching but not being _touched_. Talking but not really _talking_. Two years of wanting more and not even knowing it. He was on his knees in front of her and it was all he could do not to beg her.

 _Please need me too_.

Maybe she was answering him, maybe they were hit by the same realization at the same time, or perhaps hers was different. Whatever it was, he was positive that they were both leaning into the kiss at the same time.

She pushed back the chair and joined him, both on their knees on the cold, hard floor. He didn't stop to think about whether it hurt her because her lips were so soft, and her skin was too when he wrapped his arm around her back to pull her closer.

She just smiled when he grabbed the blanket from his bunk and spread it on the floor. It was odd and rough and not entirely comfortable but they both knew the metal frame would make too much noise. Her kisses came deeper and deeper, the breath of the both of them came faster and faster, and his heart must have been beating loud enough for both of them to hear even before he unbuttoned her shirt and finally got to pull it off her shoulders.

Then he found out just how far her scarring went, and she traced her fingers along his own scars, her touch just as tender as ever.

Shedding their remaining clothing, he pulled her onto his lap. They sat for a moment, fully naked, hand in hand, nose to nose, knowing the entire crew could be just outside the door listening. The door was unlocked, but he didn't want to break away for long enough to do anything about it, and neither did she.

She settled onto him, slowly, too slowly, the sensation almost dizzying in its intensity. But then he did run those kisses up her neck, and dug teeth into her earlobe. She smiled into the kisses, and her hips began to rock against him, her every movement intensifying this need he didn’t even know he had until so recently, this need to be inside her, to hear the gentle gasps in her breath, to feel the trembling in her hands as they clutched at him.

When she seemed like she was about to come he wrapped his hands around her hips to steady her, to keep her moving, to help her along, and when she screwed shut her eyes and pressed a hand over her own mouth to suppress her moans he almost pulled it away.

_Let them hear. Who gives a fuck. I make my own decisions._

But her hand fell away by itself, and she pressed her fingertips into his thighs. Her back arched, her head fell back in a cry that turned out to be mostly silent, and her orgasm reverberated through the whole of her and through him, too, as he held her in in his arms and on his cock.

She laughed, softly, and shuddered again, her eyes still closed tight. She pressed her cheek against his, her hair caught between them, warm and soft and stinging against his damaged nerves.

It was the sweetest pain he'd ever felt.

When she recovered herself she helped him to his own release, and it was more difficult than it should have been because he wanted it _so fucking much_ , with her, right then, and for it to be perfect. But it came, and he came, and if he dug his own fingertips into her skin it didn't seem to hurt her but if it did, by God he hoped she understood and forgave him.

Blind, sated, he lay back on the rough blanket, the folds of it pressing into his skin. For a few fleeting moments, her thigh over his, their skin pressed together, her hand tracing lazy circles on his shoulder, he was happy.

That's what he tells himself.

In reality, his elbow slipped off the blanket and met the cold metal of the floor and he realized he'd been too busy thinking about how it could work, _if_ it could work, who he needed to talk to to _make_ it work, and not just _being_. Then he was too preoccupied with the guilt from that to stop her getting up, putting on her clothes, packing up her bag, and standing at the doorway uttering those fateful words.

 _See you in a week_.

  
He watches the scribe pack up the bag, just as Nell had those few weeks before. But not just like her; the scribe does it differently. He bites back the criticism, tries not to tell her that the scissors go in the case, first, you don't just drop them in, and you have to watch the lid on that pot because it comes loose if you're not careful. It's hers, now, and that's her lesson to learn.

And as he watches he wonders what he could have done differently, if anything could have changed it. Maybe she took risks, risks she wouldn't have taken if she'd known, if she'd _really_ known how he felt.

But how could she know that when even he didn't? That's self-indulgence to far too great a degree. A degree that's not permitted for him. Perhaps he just needed to be reminded of it.

But...

If nothing else...

If he could have had a last kiss. If he'd known it would be the last one, so soon after the first, he could have...

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. When, though, you idiot. When she was plaiting her hair, hands behind her head, eyes closed in concentration? When she'd finished packing her bag, and turned away from the table with a smile? At the door, fingers wrapped around the doorhandle?

If he'd kissed her then, he could have stopped her. At least stopped her from saying it.

_See you in a week._

_You won't_ , he says, to the memory of her, still standing at the door.  
_You won’t, damnit._  
_How could you make a promise like that, in a place like_ this.  
_Nothing is certain._  
_Nothing._

The door clicks shut behind Nell and the scribe both. The memory dissolves, and he's brought back to the present.

He's never wanted to be there less.

He blinks away the burning in his eyes, refusing to acknowledge it. Behind him, the pile of reports is even bigger than before. Every squad sent out into the Commonwealth seems to come back smaller. Each brings a report that in a varying number of words say the same thing.

Name, deceased.

Somewhere in the pile, that name is hers.

The volume of them doesn't make it easier to bear. One day he'll have to see it. It's his job. It's his duty. How he feels is irrelevant.

He grabs a bottle, pours out far more than a shot into an enamel mug, and pulls the first folder from the pile.

**Author's Note:**

> please do leave me a comment if you have any thoughts, either here or on [tumblr](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com). 


End file.
